Retro game purchases in October 2016

Well I actully think that this was a very quiet month compared to others, I guess its a mix of showing some restraint and also just the fact that I havent really seen that much stuff which I have felt I should grab.

The first few bits I got I got on Tuesday the 4th of October, I went in to an exchange store and picked up a copy of GodZilla save the earth for xbox £5 the only unfortunate part being that it was missing its manual. Then I went to game where they had some PSP games in stock second hand for £1 on a 3 for the price of 2 offer and so I grabbed Need for speed pro street, Daxter (platinum) and Virtua Tennis world tour (platinum) all complete for psp for £2. Just before heading home I dropped in to a charity shop where I found SPEC OPS Airbourne Commando for Playstation (original) for £1.49 Sealed complete, might not be the most scream worthy of games to find but its always nice to find something thats never been opened.

On the 11th after work I went in to a local indy store where I grabbed a copy of International superstar soccer 64 for n64 cart only for £1 and I also got disc only copies of Taito legends and Taito legends 2 for xbox for £2. I know these are not really going to be worth anything but in the case of the Taito games its  great way to play a bunch of there old classics in one place for very little cash, its a shame Taito doesnt really exist anymore.

On the 13th I recieved something I had purchased from a private seller, I got Defender of the Crown for the NES complete with its box manual, warranty card etc for  £7.. This is a game I actually really like and used to play a lot on various systems when I was younger so this was quite possibly my favourate purchase of the month.

On the 14th I went to a charity shop and managed to find Otogi myth of demons for the original xbox complete for £1.50 which I was very happy with if not for the above purchase of Defender of the crown this might have been my favourate find of the month (arguably it is the bigger bargin but it has less of a personal impact on me). I also went to an indy store where I grabbed VR Troopers for Game Gear still sealed for £5, I really didnt think I would ever own a sealed Game Gear game, in fact the few game gear games I own are all just carts except for one other game, its not a machine I have ever focused on very much.

On the 16th I wanderd into a charity shop and grabbed Capcom Classics collection (volume 1) for the Playstation 2 disc only for £1 and Music complete for the original playstation for £1.

On the 21st I went to a local indy games shop and got Global Gladiators boxed complete for the megadrive for £3 and Jimmy whites whirlwind snooker complete for the megadrive for £3 as well.

On the 25th I went in to my local CEX and grabbed WWE Day Of Reckoning 2 for GameCube Complete for £5, its a game I have wanted for awile after all I really like wrestling games in general and had always heard that this was a very good one.

On the 27th I went to a pawn store and once again got a wrestling game , I got WWE Raw complete for Xbox for 50pence, I also picked up Buffy The vampire slayer complete for Xbox for 50pence from the same place.

It was a pretty quiet month in general. A lot of this was to do with the fact that I basically didnt go overly looking for things to spend money on, I didnt look at things online, I didnt go anywhere that was out of my way I just wanderd in the shops I pretty much happend to be passing. I guess that the next few months will proberbly be kind of quiet what with them being November and December and me having to spend money on things for Christmas, although in fairness I am doing pretty well with keeping on top of this, I have half of my presents already and hey maybe I will get something retro game related for Christmas you never know.

My Halloween plans this year.

Well it seems like a very long time since I have talked about anything horror on here, and yet you would think with it being October and Halloween soon dawning upon us that I would want to do post after post afer post about horror films or horror related books and the truth is in a way yes I would like to do something special. The problem is I have found myself suffering with a bad case of sinusitus, I am clawing my way into work as I dont want the hassle associated with time off for sickness but I am finding myself a little too run down to do much else.

So what am I going to do for Halloween this year and how do I usually spend Halloween? Well for a start I love a good horror film but I dont like going to parties or the concept of trick or treat so usually I would turn all of the lights off cut a face in a pumpkin light it and sit and watch films with my daughter, as for what I would watch well a lot of this would be controlled by what I thought was good but also suitable for my kid. As she has gotten older I have been less and less limited, it has become a tradition one which I really enjoy, I enjoy any kind of holiday where I can do something which brings me and someone I love closer togther, in the case me and my daughter bonding over good films popcorn and other treats. There are a few issues this year my above mentioned health issue being one of them, the other is that I need to be in work for 6 0'clock the morning after Halloween so there is no chance of me staying up all night watching stuff. I am thinking that maybe I will have to do the movie thing on the 1st of November instead, its not quiet perfect being the wrong day and all and with my daughter having school the following morning but at least we could watch stuff till about 11pm, it seems to be the best I will be able to manage (I can also proberbly get away with throwing one last film on for myself after she has gone to bed).

In the build up to Halloween I usually watch a lot of horror films and in the past I have liked to try and write a horror based short story to release on kindle near Halloween but I havent really managed to do either of these things this year, I have however been following the Cinemassacre Monster Madness videos which have been released by James Rolf every single day in October. Monster Madness has itself become a big part of my Halloween celebrations for the last ten years, I have enjoyed every single video he has made for this and I have to admit to being a little dissapointed that he has said that this will be the last year he does it, I can fully understand why though, it must take him a massive amount of time and effort to film, edit and upload all of the videos (yes I know Mike helps him with some parts of this but its still a big work load).

So in my build up to Halloween this year what have I really done? Well so far I have watched every single one of the Monster Madness Videos, a friend of mine also gave me the UltraViolet codes for the first 3 seasons of Bates Motel the TV show based off the character of Norman Bates from the classic horror novel Psycho from 1959 by American writer Robert Bloch (A lot of people will be more familiar with the fantastic Hithcock film of the same name based on this book). So far I have watched and enjoyed the first series, in fact I might actually write a piece just about this in the future but in short I have been enjoying it. I also started the month out by watching the second season of American Horror story, stupidly I got the second series for £5 on blue ray and watched it without having seen the first, I have since got my hands on the first series but havent even thought about putting it on. There are only so many hours in the day and lots of things that need to be done.

I guess I will leave it here maybe I will do a post about the films I actually watch on my sort of Halloween night, either way if your reading this I hope whatever you do for Halloween this year that you have fun and enjoy yourself.

Should we really trust anything like Rotten Tomatoes, meta critic etcetera?

So Suicide Squad currently holds a rating of 26% on Rotten Tomatoes. Apparently critics hate the film and yet every single regular person I know in my day to day life who has seen it has come away screaming the films praises talking about how much they enjoyed it, how fun it is and in some cases how much parts of it moved them. Now I am not going to try to tell you that Suicide Squad is going to be an all time classic, its not Cassablanca and its not Night of the Living dead, its not going to change either the world or the film industry but you have to realise that not every movie can be a ground breaking film which starts of a new movement or genre some films are just simple good honest entertainment.

There are two obvious ways I can look at this I could either go on to say what I find good about Suicide Squad and then give you my own score for it or I could do the other thing and look at some very low scoring films which I feel deserve the score and then try to argue that surly suicide Squad is not as bad as these. I think its easier though  to state that personally I find 26% to be an insult, maybe its because I see 50% as being average, so to me a 50% film would be neither good or bad it would fall somewere in the middle, so a film scoring almost half of that should surly be a very poor film with very little to redeam it shouldnt it? Now by a very poor film I dont mean that the plot has a few holes here or there I mean a none sensical mess which can hardly be considerd a story at all, a film which has so very little when it comes to redeaming qualities that its an absolute mess. I think the problem is that modern audiences are simply spoiled we have so much choice nowdays and on top of that there are so many films with monster budgets, heck we have 45 minute TV shows which have a larger budget than studios at one point would even have dared to dream that they could get for there feature length production. We also have a lot of people who have grown up dring the age of MTV so have next to zero attention span, sit them in front of a bonofide classic of the past like Cassablanca or Dracula and they would yawn and moan and ask when something is going to blow up. Add on to the top of this that you have weird ass polotics that I cant frankly understand most of. If someone really really likes a film but thinks it is being rated unfairly by others even if they think it deserves an 8 they are going to give it a 10 and if they see it getting 8's but think its worth a 4 and are getting annoyed at all the 8's it is getting then they will give it 0 thinking that they are doing there part to readress the balance trying to get it closer to what they see as its true score. Then you have Marvel fans low balling DC related films and DC fans returning the favour, people who want to see one studio do better than another or who have either a grudge against or a boner for a certain director and what we are really left with is a total and utter mess.

The moral of the story I think is to take everything you read and hear with a grain of salt and simply see things yourself and maake your own mind up.

How when Rewatching Wrestling its often the Villians I appreciate the most

I have to admit when I was young I was a total mark as far as wrestling goes, as a young boy I really believed that it was all real and true and I loved most of the guys you were suppoed to love and I hated most of the guys you were supposed to hate.

This meant as a kid I couldnt stand Ravashing Rick Rude, I couldnt stand the Model Rick Martel, I hated The Nature Boy Rick Flair, I couldnt stand Ted Debiose but then when I got older and began to learn more about things I began to really appreciate the art of being a bad guy. It must be really easy to walk out a hero and be met with cheers love and appreciation, to see people wearing your T-Shirt screaming your name but for someone to be a good hero they need good villians to defeat. To be a good Villian you need to go out there and hear people boo and you need to not be discouraged by this, this is your aplause, this means you are doing your job well and to do it even better you need feed the crowds aggression, you need to learn what they respond to and you have to do your best to magnify whatever it is they hate about you to the degree that the crowd needs to see you get your ass kicked and that they will see whoever does it as a hero.

The Model and Rick Rude both showed a cocky arrogance about there own apperance going so far as to talk about how superior they were to not only other wrestlers but to people in the crowd but they both did it in very diffrent ways, Rick Rude was a master at talking on the microphone winding people up talking about how good his body was and how fat and unnatractive the average man in the crowd was, he did it so well that everyone just believed he was a huge asshole no one ever seemed to feel like he was just saying it for shock value or as part of his job everyone seeemed to believe that it was a true reflextion of who he really was and how he felt about himself. I would argue that the Model although he could deliver a darn good promo did the same kind of job of getting people to hate him more with his body language, the way the guy strutted and stroked his own face the more it made you want to see someone punch him straight in his face, plus throw in him spraying people in the face with his own brand of perfume.

If I hadnt hated Rick Rude as much as I did then I wouldnt have enjoyed seeing the Warrior crush him, If I didnt want to see The Model punched in the face so much I wouldnt have been so excited about his match with the Heart Break Kid. As I sat and watched a box set of Hulk Hogan matches It was very apparent that it wasnt just Hulk Hogan who built Hulkamania it was all of the villians they lined up for him to beat. So if you go through your old wrestling tapes or dvd's then give them a watch again as an adult and really study the bad guys all of the effort they go to and you might just find its them who you really want to applaud this time round.